Our View: Time to take the medicine

The Wall Street Journal, well-known for its conservative positions, noted in an editorial on Tuesday that the "irony" of President Barack Obama's plan to make meaningful cuts to carbon dioxide emissions is that all the economic damage predicted by the plan's opponents "will do nothing for climate change."

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Posted Jun. 4, 2014 at 12:01 AM

Posted Jun. 4, 2014 at 12:01 AM

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The Wall Street Journal, well-known for its conservative positions, noted in an editorial on Tuesday that the "irony" of President Barack Obama's plan to make meaningful cuts to carbon dioxide emissions is that all the economic damage predicted by the plan's opponents "will do nothing for climate change."

"The lowest 10 percent of earners pay three times as much as a share of their income for electricity compared to the middle class. If you want more inequality, this is an ideal way to ensure it."

In fact, the irony is that the cummulative costs of the Industrial Revolution's pollution are so casually ignored by those for whom "the economy" means so much, and that those at the low end of the economic scale are already enslaved by the financial and health burdens of our energy economy.

Storms grow more severe and more costly. Health for all deteriorates, as does quality of life for that "10 percent."

This isn't punishment, it's medicine.

The president's plan — to be administered through the Environmental Protection Agency — would allow states to set their own path to carbon dioxide reductions and give them credit for the work done so far. That softened the blow for the coal industry, which had been expecting the requirements to be more strict.

In Massachusetts, the fastest growing job growth is in the renewable energy sector, from development to deployment, lab coat to blue collar.

Incentives to move toward renewables — hydro-electric, wind and solar — have made the difference in the commonwealth, and should do the same across the country.

In our backyard, we see the town of Somerset struggling with the closing of one coal-fueled plant and the pending closure of another, and we have a power plant on the Cape Cod Canal that burns bunker fuel, about 100,000 gallons of which was spilled into Buzzards Bay a decade ago.

But we also have UMass Dartmouth testing wave and tidal turbines off the coast.

We have a nuclear plant in Plymouth, solar panels sprouting in fields and covering roofs all across the region and the promise of significant electricity generation from offshore wind deployed out of New Bedford.

States that get the majority of their electricity from coal plants will receive accommodations, and states like Massachusetts will be expected to keep up the good work and do better still.

This approach will allow and encourage innovation, which will lead to more and better jobs.

Alongside the new technologies, we should be developing efficiencies that allow the economy to expand while reducing our demand for energy.

That may be the greater irony: The model of expanding the economy in order to improve the standard of living for our populace has, over the past several decades, failed all but those who were already winning. The economy could be promoting knowledge rather than consumption for commerce's sake.

A world with clean skies, soil and water will encourage our pursuit of happiness more effectively than accumulating goods. Policies that promote the reduction of both pollution and demand for electricity are long overdue.